


Perfectly Flawed

by silverwolf_fox



Category: One Piece
Genre: Celestial Dragons Don't Do Body Art, Gen, Piercings, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25284109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverwolf_fox/pseuds/silverwolf_fox
Summary: To the Celestial Dragons, they are perfection, and any type of body art was seen as an egregious flaw. Desperate to separate himself from the people he came from, Rocinante indulges to make his body as perfectly flawed as possible.
Relationships: Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante & Sengoku the Buddha
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Perfectly Flawed

The first quarter of Rocinante’s basic training had officially ended, and Sengoku wanted to do something special. He’d managed to keep Garp out of his office so nothing would distract him from finishing his paperwork and on the way home he’d picked up groceries to make Roci’s favorite meal. With his busy schedule, they usually ate takeout more often than not, but this time Sengoku wanted to cook a homemade meal for his son. He was just finishing setting the table when the front door opened.

Wiping his hands with a towel, he went to welcome his son home. Roci was slipping off his shoes and turning to offer a shy smile before Sengoku drew up short, noticing the new adornments to his ears. Half-hidden beneath curly blond hair were small black hoops hanging from Roci’s earlobes.

“Rocinante,” Sengoku said sternly, “what are those?”

The young teen’s cheeks blushed a faint pink as his hand lifted to hesitate by his new piercings. “A few of the other guys wanted to get them done after training, and I decided to join them.” Roci’s voice trailed off near the end, falling quiet as he usually did when he feared he’d disappointed Sengoku, and the man’s heavy stare had Roci timidly adding, “I like them.”

After a moment of quiet deliberation, Sengoku gave a firm, “Very well,” to conclude the discussion. The single pair of piercings really weren’t a big deal, though he did wish that Roci had asked him first, and Sengoku would consider himself lucky if that was as rebellious as his son ever got.

Then Rocinante came home one day a couple years later, ears fully decorated with hoops and studs and even a bar stretching across the top of his left ear, and, in the face of Sengoku’s shocked silence, could only offer the same reasoning as before, “I like them.”

Even though Roci had reached an age where he didn’t need to ask permission for such things, he did take pity on his father and promised to take a break from piercings, which, Sengoku distinctly noticed, was not the same as saying he would stop.

Instead, the next time his son returned from a mission, black ink stylized his right forearm, and for all that Sengoku thought he was going to have a heart attack fearing Roci was turning into a punk, Roci said again, with an odd look in his eyes, “I like them.”

Sensing that there was far more to those words than was being revealed, Sengoku decided not to say anything the next time Roci appeared with a tattoo curling up his spine or wrapping around one side of his ribcage or twisting down his thigh. There were no regulations against them, and all but the ones on his arms were hidden by his uniform anyway.

Then Roci apparently thought he’d taken a long enough break and showed up with a ring in one eyebrow and a line of three silver balls on his tongue, and Sengoku couldn’t keep quiet. He had to ask, had to understand beyond the ever present “I like them”.

And so Roci sought the words to make him understand.

In Mariejois, the Celestial Dragons were considered the perfect beings. Born from that doctrine, there was an interesting cultural belief that their bodies were created flawless, and any unnatural marking or scar was viewed with immense abhorrence. However this thought also extended to voluntary body art, in fact it was viewed even worse. No matter how visually appealing, to add tattoos or piercings to a Celestial Dragons’ body was to insinuate that it was not already perfect. That it could be improved.

Those were a people - that was a life - that Rocinante wanted to separate himself from as much as possible. He shyly fiddled with the studs in his ear, and he said, “That’s why I like them.”

What else could Sengoku say except, “I like them, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had this headcanon of the CD's thinking body art ruined their "flawless" physical forms and had to write for it.


End file.
